Foreigners (22 page)

I look over the low fence of 209 Belle Vue Road. The
garden is a riot of overgrown weeds and shrubbery. A blue
minivan lies derelict in the yard. Beyond the minivan, at
the end of the long narrow garden, stands the three-storey
house. There are six neatly spaced windows on the top
two floors, three on each. The ground floor boasts a bay
window. The curtains are variations of white and green,
and they don't match. The curtains that hang in the bay
window on the ground floor are white, but their dignity
is compromised by the fact that not only do they hang
askew, they are also badly twisted. Traditionally, curtains
block out all light. They block out the day. The world.
But not these curtains. To the side of the front gatepost
somebody has hand-painted '209'. Blue string holds the
brown gate shut, but much of the fencing to either side
of the gate has collapsed. The gate serves little purpose.
This was David's home. The place he hoped to return to
when the High Royds doctor said, 'You're discharged.' This
large three-storey brick house with a crushed Marlboro
packet lying discarded by the gate; a place that boasts no
television aerial on the roof. Back in the thirties this must
have been a highly desirable neighbourhood for the street
is broad and the houses suggest grandeur and affluence.
But by David's time – by the fifties – this area was full
of transients and prostitutes; and little has changed. Today
a woman (Miss Dorton-Smith) lives here alone, but she
will not answer her door. The door remains closed. I walk
around to the side fencing. The labyrinth of jungle hides
two more minivans, one red and one white; and the skeleton
of a motorbike. The house, the garden, the vehicles, have
all been 'let go'. Abandoned.

The next time I saw David must have been six or seven
years after the dance. I was walking down towards the
university and he was walking up. I hesitated for a moment
because he had changed. He'd put on an awful lot of
weight and the bounce had gone. It was just no longer
there. And the light had also gone from his eyes. David
was a man who was in the habit of making strong eye
contact, but I looked at him and saw that the light had
definitely gone out. And then he told me that he'd been
in hospital, and I thought 'oh shit'. Around this time people
were beginning to become conscious that Armley jail wasn't
the only place that could brutalise these men. We stood
together by Woodhouse Moor and talked for a while, and
I just assumed that he still lived at Belle Vue Road where
he'd been living before. But it was only later that my
husband explained to me that David probably appeared
strange because he was so pumped up with drugs. After
this meeting by Woodhouse Moor I met him next at a
dance at Jubilee Hall where he was a bit more talkative,
and I seem to remember he was mixing in quite a lot. And
then one of the Ghanaians confirmed everything for me,
and he told me that David had been drugged while he was
in the mental hospital and that's why he'd been behaving
a bit strangely of late. And then after a few months or so,
David disappeared again into Armley jail. By this stage I'd
already decided that I was going to watch out for him.
Armley jail had a fearsome reputation, for the wardens and
officers often had fascist pins on the inside of their lapels,
and they'd flick them at you if you were visiting a coloured
prisoner. But they didn't frighten me. I wouldn't let them.

When David came out we started seeing a lot more of
him, especially around Chapeltown. But the truth was
although he still wore a suit and tie he was beginning to
look a little unkempt. He had a bit of a wispy beard, not
like the straggly one he had towards the end, but he wasn't
really holding it all together as well as he'd done in the
past. The Hayfield pub in Chapeltown was now our regular
hangout, and he'd sometimes come into the pub, but David
was never much of a drinker. I mainly saw him in the
street, and he always gave me the impression that he knew
where he was going. However, it was only after two or
three years that I realised that when David left us after a
night in the Hayfield he was, in fact, going to sleep in
shop doorways. Things were getting worse for David, and
in those days he was always getting himself arrested, but
mind you it was never his fault. I would go to the cells
and try to get him a solicitor and arrange for bail, but it
was clear what was going on. Once I went to court and
David was in the dock with a bruised right eye, yet they
were convicting
him
of assaulting a police officer if you
can believe it. I mean, you only had to look at the size of
the police officer and then look at the size of David to
see how ridiculous this was. The other charge that they
habitually brought against David was that he had been
drunk, but everybody knew that David was not a major
drinker, but the situation was hopeless. The police did
whatever the police wanted to do, particularly when it came
to vagrants, and especially when it came to coloured people.
David, being the only coloured vagrant in Leeds, was in
a bad situation.

My husband and I always looked out for him, and if
we ever heard that he was in a particular shop doorway
we would always go out and try to find him. The white
vagrants slept in the city centre underneath the railway
arches, but whenever I went down there looking for David
they would say 'He's not here' and 'We don't want that
type around here'. I mean, the cheek of them. We tried
to get David into the shelter at St George's Crypt, but
they said that he was a drunk and that he was too loud,
but what they didn't say was that he was too black. The
Salvation Army would often take him in for a couple of
days, but then he'd get racially abused and he'd answer
back and that would be the end of that for they'd want
to get rid of him. You know, that was half the problem,
that David wouldn't take any abuse from anybody. And
he was an easy target. In the early days, the lonely walk
back home across Woodhouse Moor from a night's
drinking in Chapeltown, or from the Mecca, always left
him exposed. I'd never realised just how much of an easy
target he was, but he'd never take any abuse from anybody,
including the police. They would always tell me that
David had failed the 'attitude test', but that was because
he wasn't prepared to be anybody's victim. Some of the
other Africans tried to help him, but you know it was a
very busy time with lots of activism. People's energies
were being used up all over the place. It was, after all,
the beginning of the Black Power movement for one
thing, and the local community were actually succeeding
in their efforts to close down racist pubs. People were
busy and so they didn't always realise that David was no
longer on the scene.

I think David suffered a lot in silence. I'm sure that the
first time they took him into Armley jail he wouldn't take
any abuse from the screws, and that's why they sent him
to the asylum where they treated him like a schizophrenic
and tried to drive him mad. Oh, they have their stupid
reasoning, telling you that he gets aggressive and that they
can't understand him, but it's a cultural thing for heaven's
sake. Rather than add another adverb or clause, West
Indians and Africans tend to raise their voices or use their
hands to speak. Jews do it as well, and that's not madness
that's culture. But by sending him out of Armley jail and
to High Royds they deliberately made David 'slow' when
he was never, ever, slow before. I mean, when he emphasises
with his hands they say he's aggressive, and so they
pump him full of drugs. Like anybody, David could be
lippy if you insulted him, but ninety-nine per cent of the
time he was extremely gentle and polite, and very protective.
I remember that once when we were out somebody
swore in a pub, and David just looked at the offender and
said, 'Ladies', meaning, 'Stop that because ladies are present.'
After David came out of the hospital he was very, very
quiet. On a few occasions the police actually phoned my
house. Not all the police were bad apples. There were
some good ones, and if they found him sleeping rough
anywhere near my house they might call me up and David
would come here and spend the night. In the morning he'd
wake up, read the
Guardian
, then have some breakfast and
go off. Before David left the house my husband would
often ask him, 'David, shall we go and look for a flat for
you?' but he would always say, 'No, I'm fine. I'm going to
meet somebody.' He never wanted help. He was too proud.
In fact, as soon as I even got close to saying that I'd get
him a flat, or a rented room, he didn't want to discuss it.
He was a man of great personal dignity. He used to have
such high hopes for his future, but the sad thing was he
came to recognise that all of that had gone. In the old
days he used to wonder what he'd do once he qualified as
an engineer. That's all he used to think about. But this
new David didn't want to be pitied. Not by anybody. But
I should also say that there were others who helped a lot
more than I did. Other Africans were always looking out
for him. If they saw David wasn't doing well they would
offer to give him money, or help him in some way. I
remember one Ghanaian who sold crockery, and who had
a crockery warehouse. This man always left the side door
of his warehouse open in case David needed somewhere
to sleep, but David didn't want to bother anybody. He
didn't want to be a burden or cause trouble for anybody.
This was his way.

These days the typical black admission is young, in
his twenties, loud, paranoid, resisting strongly – you
need to get him sedated to restrain him, and the
doctors don't know what's going on – he's usually
brought in by the police, therefore the doctor hasn't
got a clue as to his history – and as with men generally
they would be more aggressive, you would be
more frightened of them and you would put them
on more medication.

National Health Doctor, 2002

In 1858 the Empress of the British Empire, Queen Victoria,
came to Leeds to open the newly constructed town hall.
Boasting Corinthian columns, and guarded by large stone
lions, Leeds Town Hall was one of the largest civic buildings
in Europe. The words around the vestibule – 'Europe
– Asia – Africa – America' – reminded the people of
Leeds that, only one year after the Indian Mutiny had been
put down, the globe remained Britain's true sphere of influence.
Leeds was perfectly positioned to take advantage of
this fortuitous fact. Clothing was no longer the town's main
business, and Leeds was becoming better known as the
'workshop of the world'. Hundreds of factories produced
bicycles, cranes, nails, sewing machines, bolts, train rails,
locomotives, axles, bricks, and much more. There were
scores of furnaces burning every day, and the sky was
choked with chimneys and pollution. Glassworks and
tanneries, skinworks and breweries, every type of industry
was represented. Leeds was a hive of productivity and
entirely dependent upon the labour of the poor and the
young.

Thousands of little children, both male and female,
but principally female, from seven to fourteen years
of age, are daily compelled to labour from six o'clock
in the morning to seven in the evening, with only –
Britons, blush while you read it! – with only thirty
minutes allowed for eating and recreation. Poor
infants! Ye are indeed sacrificed at the shrine of
avarice, without even the solace of the negro slave;
ye are no more than he is, free agents; ye are compelled
to work as long as the necessity of your needy parents
may require, or the cold-blooded avarice of your worse
than barbarian masters may demand! Ye live in the
boasted land of freedom, and feel and mourn that
ye are slaves, and slaves without the only comfort
which the negro has. He knows it is his sordid, mercenary
master's interest that he should live, be strong and
healthy. Not so with you. Ye are doomed to labour
from morning to night for one who cares not how
soon your weak and tender frames are stretched to
breaking! You are not mercifully valued at so much
per head; this would assure you at least (even with
the worst and most cruel masters) of the mercy shown
to their own labouring beasts. No, no! your soft and
delicate limbs are tired and fagged, and jaded, at only
so much per week, and when your joints can act no
longer, your emaciated frames are instantly supplied
with other victims, who in this boasted land of liberty
are hired – not sold – as slaves and daily forced to
hear that they are free.

Richard Oastler, Letter to
Leeds Mercury
, 29 September,
1830

During the nineteenth century, cloth continued to occupy
a special place in the Leeds economy, and with the onset
of Jewish immigration it achieved something of a revival.
The first Jew arrived in Leeds in the 1820s and was listed
as a voter in 1832. By the late 1840s a small community of
middle-class German Jews had established themselves in
Leeds, but the Jewry that followed in their wake was largely
comprised of poor Jews from Eastern Europe, often Polish
or Russian in origin, who were fleeing pogroms, particularly
those that followed the murder of Tsar Alexander II.
They would arrive at Hull and make their way west to
Leeds in the hope of finding some kind of occupation in
the clothing industry, for many were skilled tailors. As
their numbers increased they settled in their own ghetto
near North Street in conditions familiar to most workingclass
residents of Leeds. But this was now their city – their
new home – and they had no intention of going anywhere
else, despite the well-displayed signs that let them know
that Jews were not welcome. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the vast majority of the 8,000 Jews in Leeds were
employed in one of the 98 Jewish tailoring sweatshops
where the conditions were often indescribable.